A Christmas Story is a 1983 American/Canadian comedy film based on the short stories and semi-fictional anecdotes of author and raconteur Jean Shepherd, including material from his books In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories . It was directed by Bob Clark. The film has since become a holiday classic and is known to be shown numerous times on television during the Christmas season.
Plot
The film is set in the fictional city of Hohman (based on real-life city of Hammond, Indiana). 9-year-old Ralphie Parker (Peter Billingsley) wants only one thing for Christmas: "an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time." Between run-ins with his younger brother Randy (Ian Petrella) and having to handle school bully Scut Farkus (Zack Ward), and his sidekick Grover Dill (Yano Anaya) Ralphie does not know how he will ever survive long enough to get the BB gun for Christmas.
The plot revolves around Ralphie's overcoming a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to his owning the precious Red Ryder BB gun: the fear that he will shoot his eye out. In each of the film's three acts, Ralphie makes his case to another individual; each time he is met by the same retort. When Ralphie asks his mother (Melinda Dillon) for a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas, she says, "No, you'll shoot your eye out." Next, when Ralphie writes a theme about wanting the BB gun for Mrs. Shields (Tedde Moore), his teacher at Harding Elementary School, Ralphie gets a C+, and Mrs. Shields writes "P.S. You'll shoot your eye out" on it. Finally, Ralphie asks an obnoxious department store Santa Claus (Jeff Gillen) for a Red Ryder BB gun, and Santa responds, "You'll shoot your eye out, kid. Merry Christmas! Ho, ho, ho!", before pushing Ralphie down a long slide with his boot.
One day after he gets the C+ on his composition, Ralphie is struck in the face with a snowball thrown at him by the bully Scut Farkus who then begins to tease and taunt Ralphie. Ralphie finally reaches his breaking point and then charges at Farkus knocking him down, and after knocking down Grover Dill, who tries to intervene for his Pal, proceeds to beat Scut's face bloody. During the fight, Ralphie begins to swear non-stop as he lands blow after blow to the squealing Farkus. Ralphie's Mother shows up and pulls her Son off the bully, and takes him home. This part of the film occurs shortly after a scene where Ralphie gets into trouble for swearing while helping his father fix a flat tire. Ralphie is worried about the swearing and is sure he will be in big trouble when his father gets home from work. Instead, Ralphie's mother tells his father about the fight casually at the dinner table. She then changes the subject of the conversation to an upcoming football game, distracting his father and getting Ralphie off the hook in the process.
Christmas morning, Ralphie looks frantically for a box that would hold the BB gun to no avail. He and his brother have quite a few presents, but he is disappointed because he did not get the gun. His disappointment turns to joy as his father (Darren McGavin) points out one last half-hidden present, ostensibly from Santa. As Ralphie unwraps the BB gun, Mr. Parker explains the purchase to his none-too-thrilled wife, stating that he had one himself when he was 8 years old.
Ralphie goes out to test his new gun, shooting at a paper target perched on top of a metal sign, and predictably gets a ricochet from the metal sign. This ricochet ends up hitting just below his eye, which causes him to flinch and lose his glasses. While searching for the glasses, Ralphie ends up stepping on them, breaking them. However, he concocts a story to his mother about an icicle falling on him and breaking his glasses, which she believes. Suddenly, a horde of the next door neighbor's dogs, which frequently bother Ralphie's father, manages to get into the house and eat the turkey that was prepared for that evening's meal. Making a last-minute decision, Ralphie's father takes everyone out to a Chinese restaurant where they eat what the narrator calls "Chinese Turkey".
At the end of the story, we see Ralphie lying in bed on Christmas night with his gun by his side. Randy is holding the toy zeppelin he received. The voiceover states that this was the best present he received or would ever receive.
Subplots
Several subplots are incorporated in the body of the film, based on other separate short stories by Shepherd. The most notable involves the Old Man (Darren McGavin) winning a "major award." He entered a trivia contest out of the newspaper, which asked for the name of The Lone Ranger's nephew's horse (thanks to his wife, who supplied the answer: Victor). A large crate arrived and inside was a lamp shaped like a woman's leg wearing fishnet stockings, much to Mrs. Parker's displeasure. Just two days later, Mrs. Parker broke the lamp, infuriating the Old Man. The leg was the logo of the contest's sponsor, the Nehi bottling company (the details of the contest were not necessarily made clear in the movie).
Other vignettes include:
- Ralphie's friends Flick and Schwartz disputing over whether a person's tongue will stick to a frozen flagpole. Schwartz ultimately issues Flick a "triple dog dare" (the most serious of those used by the kids; he bypasses a "triple dare" from a "double dog dare", a serious boyhood protocol breach), and Flick's tongue gets stuck to the pole, much to his terror. A suction tube within the flagpole was used to simulate the freezing of Flick's tongue to the pole.
- Ralphie receiving his Secret Society decoder pin , and learning a lesson about being ripped off (his first secret message with the pin turned out to be an Ovaltine radio commercial) to which he simply replied "son of a bitch".
- Ralphie and his friends dealing with the neighborhood bully, Scut Farkus (Zack Ward).
- The Old Man's legendary battles with the aging and malfunctioning furnace.
- Ralphie letting slip the dreaded "Queen Mother of Dirty Words", the F-dash-dash-dash word (after his father knocks a hubcap from his hands, spilling its contents, the lug nuts from a flat tire) and later, when asked where he'd heard the bad word, falsely blaming his friend, Schwartz, and not pointing out that his father utters the word daily. After Ralphie's Mother telephones Schwartz's Mother to inform her that her Son had been responsible for passing along the bad word to Ralphie, we hear Schwartz getting what appears to be the thrashing of his life at the hands of his hysterical Mother. To keep it censored, Billingsly says "fudge" on camera.
- The numerous smelly and bothersome hound dogs of the next door neighbors, the Bumpuses, including the dogs destroying the Christmas turkey (prompting the family to go out and have Peking duck instead, resulting in a giggling fit by the mother and the boys).
- Several fantasy sequences depict Ralphie's daydreams of glory and vindication, including the vanquishing of a small army of villains dressed in stereotypical burglar costume of flat caps, black masks and striped shirts with his Red Ryder BB gun obtaining his parents gratitude, an extremely good grade for his written theme about the BB gun, and parental remorse over a case of "soap poisoning" (related to his cursing).
- Mrs. Parker's misadventures in overly bundling Randy up for the winter weather by wrapping him in sweaters and a jacket so tightly he is unable to put his arms down, then Randy getting inadvertently knocked down and unable to get up under his own power (his only defense when they are confronted by Scut Farkus.)
- Randy's refusal to eat a meal on his own incites hilarity between him and his mother at the dinner table.
Cast
- Peter Billingsley as Ralphie Parker - the film's protagonist, a nine-year-old imaginative dreamer.
- Jean Shepherd as adult Ralphie - the narrator (also has an on-screen cameo; see below).
- Ian Petrella as Randy Parker - Ralphie's younger brother, who hasn't voluntarially eaten in over three years.
- Darren McGavin as Mr. Parker (The Old Man) - Ralphie's dad is at the center of the Major Award vignette, and is depicted using colorful nonsensical invective.
- Melinda Dillon as Mrs. Parker - Ralphie's mom is the primary dispenser of the oft-repeated phrase, "You'll shoot your eye out." Her first name is never revealed either.
- Scott Schwartz as Flick - Ralphie's friend, who learns about tongues and cold metal the hard way.
- R.D. Robb as Schwartz - Ralphie's other friend, on whom Ralphie pins the blame for his knowing "the 4-letter word beginning with F".
- Zack Ward as Scut Farkus - the neighborhood bully, who torments Ralphie and his friends en route to and from school.
- Yano Anaya as Grover Dill - Scut's toadie, who is promoted to main bully in My Summer Story .
- Tedde Moore as Miss Shields - Ralphie's fourth grade teacher, the only onscreen character played by the same actor in the sequel, My Summer Story .
- Jeff Gillen as Santa Claus - the rather frightening and cranky department store incarnation of "the Head Honcho," who delivers the last blow to Ralphie's hope for a BB gun.
- David Svoboda as Botox Boy - weird little boy in line waiting to see Santa Claus, wearing aviation goggles.
- Drew Hocevar as one of the two Christmas elfs - He is the one paired with the Department Store Santa.
In the DVD commentary, director Bob Clark mentions that Jack Nicholson was considered for the role of the Old Man; Clark expresses gratitude that he ended up with Dar
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